


Hitting Bottom

by thisprettywren



Series: Gravity Series [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-29
Updated: 2010-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-14 05:03:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisprettywren/pseuds/thisprettywren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Guilt is a difficult emotion, he reasoned, even for someone used to feeling it occasionally; he could imagine it was tearing Sherlock up inside, but he also knew how bloody stubborn his flatmate could be, and trusted his innate arrogance to pull him out of it in time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hitting Bottom

**Author's Note:**

> John POV. Warnings/Enticements: Self-destructive behaviour, questionable medical practice.

“I think,” Sherlock had said, looking down, the long fingers of his right hand twisting his left thumb in embarrassment, “that it’s impossible to humble oneself. Even for me. Especially for me.” His chin jerked slightly as a his eyes flashed up, locking for a moment on John’s before they were gone again, lost behind a shade of lashes as his gaze dropped. “The best one can hope for is that the person who finally _does_ humble you… does so in such a way….” Another pause, a hitching breath; John felt like he might be about to cry at the sheer openness of it, at the painful exposure and at how different this all was from the Sherlock he’d first known.

The other man dug his nails into his palm, steadied himself, tried again. “That the person who finally humbles you does so in a way that isn’t totally obliterating. That you have a shot at reassembling the pieces. After.” 

After the incident with Moriarty at the pool, John had been able to tell that Sherlock was struggling. They had both spent a time in hospital, afterward; John walked with a real limp now, Sherlock’s left arm would never be the same, the skin thick and roughened. John had leaped as the gun fired, knocking Sherlock into the pool, but not before he sustained serious burns to most of the left side of his body. The skin had eventually healed, of course, helped along by the patient medical staff of St. Bart’s, but John still caught him eyeing his left arm in disgust, corner of his mouth pulled back in a sardonic smirk. 

John, for his part, had caught his right hip on the edge of the pool as he went in, felt the bone crack under the impact, but had escaped otherwise unscathed. It didn’t make sense, he knew, but the injuries themselves and their aftermath had been as chaotic as the explosion itself, and that, at least, was somewhat fitting.

The body of Moriarty—Jim from IT, from the hospital—had never been recovered, although the police had managed to dig up his shoes (soles melted into the tile of the pool) and a single scrap of his suit. John knew that meant he was dead, as surely as both he and Sherlock knew that they would encounter him again. His ability to hold two such mutually-exclusive thought simultaneously in mind would have bothered John, in a different time; now, however, it seemed fitting, exactly in keeping with the ways in which their world had been flipped upside down. Now, four months later, Moriarty was both dead and a looming threat, and Sherlock was sitting slumped in front of him, asking to be humbled.

John was released from hospital first. For a few days he sat by Sherlock’s bedside, but the other man was unresponsive; he spent most of his waking hours staring into the middle distance, refusing to speak to any of the few—but persistent—visitors to his bedside.

Once, John had come into the room to discover Sherlock’s head turned to the side, eyes cast cooly, impassively downward. He was sweating—John wasn’t sure he had ever seen the other man sweat, not even after running through the streets of London in pursuit of that maniac cabbie, not even in the tense moments before triggering the explosion that would change everything—and the fingers of his right hand were pressed cruelly into the protective dressing covering his mostly-skinless left forearm. A nurse had caught him, the day before, trying to peel the edge of the dressing up; she had stopped him, of course, with a reprimand. Sherlock had seemingly acquiesced, summoning a hint of his former arrogance and dismissing the admonishment with something about “an experiment; want to see the rate of regeneration of human tissue,” and when else would he have this chance?

“Even so,” the nurse had said, sweetly forceful, “you’ll be a dear and let yourself heal in peace. No need to go making this harder on yourself than it already is, and it’s essential that the dressing stay _in place_ to prevent infection.” 

It seems that Sherlock had heeded her warning, so far as it went, at least; nevertheless, his right hand jerked away guiltily and his eyes snapped up at John’s entrance. John clutched his cane more tightly when he saw the expression in their cool depths. _He’s punishing himself,_ John thought. _Hurting himself on purpose._

He’d perched on the uncomfortable chair by the windows, trying to pretend he hadn’t seen what he saw, making jokes about the IV line still inserted in Sherlock’s right arm, about how maybe now he’d finally be able to convince Sherlock to eat regularly, if he didn’t have to go through the “boring tasting-chewing-swallowing bit. Much more efficient this way,” and maybe he’d see about getting one of those IV stands for the flat. 

“I’d like to see you racing around the rooftops dragging one of those,” John smiled. “Maybe I’d actually be able to keep up with you.”

“John….” 

John was talking too much, too fast, and Sherlock knew exactly what he was doing. _Of course he does,_ John thought to himself. _He’s Sherlock bloody Holmes, he can sodding see right through you_. It didn’t occur to John that he was, at that moment, able to see through Sherlock just as clearly.

John looked up to see the eyes, large in a pale face, looking at him straight-on. John wanted to flinch, look away, but he forced himself to hold the unnerving stare.

“John,” Sherlock started again. “I was stupid. I’m… I’m sorry.” His voice was low, his words coming out slowly like it hurt as they passed through his throat, and John found himself wondering if the other man’s throat had been singed in the explosion as well. If he’d been willing to admit it to himself, he would have recognized that he was desperately searching for a physiological reason for the psychological changes he saw in his best friend. “I couldn’t… I couldn’t _see_ , John. I got caught up in the game, and you… you almost….” 

John heard, in memory, Sherlock’s stammered thanks after Moriarty first departed, when they thought they’d been safe. _What you offered to do. It was good._

“I don’t deserve such loyalty,” he heard Sherlock saying, and the pale eyes narrowed, pinching in at the edges. “I didn’t before, but especially not now. I almost killed you. It was, in fact, the merest chance that you weren’t killed, and here we are. For all my— I couldn’t see it, John, I couldn’t stop it. I was stupid. When it mattered. The only time it mattered. Stupid.”

Sherlock had lapsed into silence, then, refusing to speak to John or the nurse who came in a bit later to check, as they did several times a day, that there were no signs of infection. John could see the twisting in the bedclothes from Sherlock’s right hand gripping and pulling them, and thought, with a surprisingly shattering moment of clarity, that the consulting detective was likely feeling real _guilt_ for the first time in his life. 

John could see that any attempt of his at reassurance would be seen as ineffectual at best and insultingly patronizing at worst. “Right then, mate,” he’d heard himself saying, his voice not sounding like his own, “they’ve cleared me. I’m headed back to the flat. I’ll come by again tomorrow. Get some rest.” This, too, went unacknowledged, Sherlock’s face turned impassively to the left, exposing the stark line of his jaw. John reached out a hand to pat his friend’s arm in farewell and felt the rigidity of the forearm under the sheets, muscles impossibly tight. John looked at him helplessly, heaved a sigh that he hoped was only internal, and limped out of the room.

On the cab ride back to Baker Street, John managed to convince himself that Sherlock would feel better in a day or two. Guilt is a difficult emotion, he reasoned, even for someone used to feeling it occasionally; he could imagine it was tearing Sherlock up inside, but he also knew how bloody stubborn his flatmate could be, and trusted his innate arrogance to pull him out of it in time. If, of course, John could avoid saying anything to push him deeper; Sherlock was as emotionally stable as a pouting teenager, and challenging him was likely to push him into a snit from which it would be difficult to extract him.

He returned to the flat to discover that Mrs. Hudson had replaced the blown-in windows in their absence. _Or Mycroft,_ he thought, _and just where has that man been these last few days?_ John stood in the living room, surveying the damage—the windows had been replaced, but the other detritus from Moriarty’s first bomb had been left as it fell. The normally pleasant jumble of the flat’s contents had been plunged into chaos, and it was all John could do to halt his observation there and refrain from seeing it as a metaphor for recent events.

Idly, John scooped to pick up a cup of instruments (pens jumbled with small knives and, for some reason, dental implements, or possibly pottery tools) that had tipped off the desk, patting its contents back into place as he restored it to an upright position on the dusty surface. He was momentarily pleased with himself, and looked around as he pondered his next task; suddenly, however, the extent of the chaos and his own exhaustion overwhelmed him, and it was all he could do to summon the energy to climb the stairs to his own bed.

 

* * *

 

“Obvious,” Sherlock was saying. “You’d be able to see it yourselves, if you weren’t all such _impossible_ idiots.”

John stood in the kitchen of the most recent victim, leaning against the low counter, watching his best friend’s frenetic movements as he progressed through the scene, explicating the events of the night before in detail. Lestrade had his notebook in his open palm, jotting down key names and phrases on which to follow up. It felt, John thought, so much like the way they would have behaved… before… that it hurt. He wondered if the detective inspector and the others at the scene were able to recognize the subtle changes in Sherlock’s demeanor that proved, in John’s mind at least, that things still weren’t back to what passed for normal.

 _He’s making a good show of it,_ John thought, _but I know him too well._ He smiled wryly to himself, amused at the thought that Sherlock would acknowledge the skill of his deductions, if he knew. When the call came in for a case, now, Sherlock didn’t display the same joy he once did. Where once he’d found the puzzles to be an amusing challenge, Sherlock now undertook cases out of a sense of grim obligation; sometimes, as now, he tried to muster an air of mockery, but it was clear his heart wasn’t in it. The light was gone from his eyes.

As Sherlock carried on, demonstrating his brilliance to Lestrade and the other members of the police at the scene, John found himself closing his eyes, trying to _will_ his friend back to the way he once was. _If only he really_ were _a sociopath. Then the encounter with Moriarty and the threat to John’s life—not the first and almost certainly not the last time they were likely to face that, either—might not have thrown him so thoroughly off his game._

John chuckled a bit at his own grim joke, and Sherlock paused in his show, just for a moment growing impossibly still, meeting John’s gaze with an almost-wounded expression. John immediately brought his attention back to the scene before him, trying to muster up an expression of amazement. And, yes, Sherlock was impressive, even operating at less-than-full capacity, even—John shuddered internally at the thought— _damaged_ as he seemed to be. John winked, trying to reassure his friend while he tried not to think about how unthinkable it should have been for Sherlock—Sherlock!—to need reassurance. _The arrogant bastard_ , John thought, and it tasted bitter.

 

* * *

 

That was why, when John found himself woken in the middle of the night from a dream of— _what? What did he dream about, anymore?_ —and flipped on the light to find Sherlock sitting at the foot of his bed, he could feel nothing but numb resignation. The taller man looked small, almost impossibly so, his hair dark against his sharp cheekbones as his eyes flicked rapidly from his hands to the bedspread to the floor and back, constantly moving but always downcast, avoiding John’s gaze. 

“That the person who finally humbles you does so in a way that isn’t totally obliterating. That you have a shot at reassembling the pieces. After.”

John took a long breath, looked at his hand. Steady. _In we go, then._ “Is that what this has been about, Sherlock? These last few months? Trying to… humble yourself?” The time since Sherlock was released from the hospital had been a long, slow tumble into disintegration. John had watched his friend move about his life like a man disorientated, shakily unfamiliar with his surroundings. Gone was the playful man he’d come to have such affection for, gone the haphazard, casually chaotic approach to life and personal safety. “Your insomnia? And the… food?”

At the last, John found himself at a loss for words. He watched Sherlock’s hands, twisting and worrying at themselves, and noticed, as if for the first time, the jutting of the bones at his wrists, how impossibly pale and transparent the skin looked stretched over each sharp metacarpal. John stole a look at his face, where the edge of Sherlock’s jaw protruded at an impossible angle. Everywhere ghostly pale, except for the greyish shadows under the sharp cheekbones and at the corners of his mouth, the purple-black circles bruising his eyes. Sherlock had always been thin, had always functioned on the adrenaline-fueled edge of exhaustion, but he’d been carrying both deprivations to new extremes. John had caught him, more than once, slumped in some improbable spot—on a stair, the edge of a table—trembling, or tight-lipped as a spasm overtook his calf or thigh. _Empty_ , John thought, _and for too long. Far too long_.

Suddenly, Sherlock’s long fingers were in his hair, pulling at the disheveled curls distractedly, dark strands wrapping around and around the pale digits. “I can’t help it, John,” he said, his voice soft. “It was always just a challenge before, a part of the game. I didn’t even feel it, really—too busy, too focused—but now… I need to make myself feel it.” His eyes flashed suddenly upward, catching John by surprise. “I’m sure it sounds crazy.”

“No,” John said, slowly. “Not crazy. But harmful, yes.” 

“I need to find it. The limit, the edge. Of what I can take.” One corner of Sherlock’s mouth twisted ruefully, and he breathed out a sharp sound almost like a laugh. “As it happens, I can take a lot. Too damn arrogant. I can’t admit defeat before I’m truly defeated, and I’m a hard man to beat.” He looked down again. “Except the one time. When it counted.”

John fought down a sudden surge of anger, looking away toward the curtained window. “You insufferable idiot,” he said, hoping his voice conveyed more humour than he felt, hoping he could pass it off as a joke. “Even with your enormous brain, you still haven’t worked out yet that we’re still bloody _here_? That we survived? Christ, Sherlock.” He found himself suddenly overcome by both exasperation and exhaustion, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Sherlock watched him as he stood and began to stalk about the small room. “Too damn right you’re too damn arrogant. Too damn arrogant and not clever enough by half. It wasn’t. Your. Bloody. Fault. If you could just get over yourself and your sodding ego for one minute, you’d see that.” John stopped, glowered. Sherlock hadn’t moved his head but had lifted his gaze, was watching him move about with eyes swiveling in their sockets. Uncanny. Infuriating. “Just what exactly is it that you want from me?”

Sherlock’s eyes fell, again. He seemed to grow smaller as he hunched bony shoulders, the fabric of his shirt rasping against itself at the slight movement. “I don’t…” he began, faltered, started again. “John. I almost. _You_ … almost.” It was another false start. A deep, shuddering breath, and he shut his eyes. “To… to make it right. Forgiveness.”

John’s anger fought with his sympathy, and won. “You have it,” he said, and he didn’t reach out a hand to touch his friend. “You’ve always had it, even though you didn’t need it, because you _didn’t do a bloody thing wrong_.” That part wasn’t true—he’d left the old woman longer than necessary, and had stupidly run off to the pool alone—but John didn’t think now was the time to bring those up. He also knew this wasn’t what Sherlock needed—it was too easy—but he didn’t particularly care. He knew the the empty-sounding words would be no more palliative this time than they had when he’d spoken them an uncountable number of times before. All the more frustrating, then, for being true.

The truth was, John was angry at Sherlock. Not for Moriarty—even the great Sherlock Holmes couldn’t have predicted the actions of that particular psychopath—but for the self-centered spiral of destructive behavior in which he’d indulged since the pool exploded. _The whole bloody world does not depend on your fantastical brain,_ John thought, for the thousandth time, _so it’s bloody well time to get over yourself and put it to use._ And then, the wish he could only admit to himself in a small voice, even inside his own head: _I want my friend back._

John could be selfish, too.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, John was awakened by the buzz of his mobile on the nightstand. The night before, John had sat back on the bed, resting his head against the wall and letting his eyes drift closed. Without a word, Sherlock had slipped from the room, and despite a gnawing feeling of guilt, John had decided not to follow, to leave Sherlock to his own devices for one more night. _I'm just so tired, and I can't save him from himself if he doesn't want to hear me._

When John finally fumbled the phone open and muttered something greeting-ish into the phone, it was Lestrade's voice on the line. "We found him," the detective inspector said. 

"Found who?" John didn't need to ask, really--who else?--but he let the question come anyway.

"Sherlock. He's here. At Bart’s.” Lestrade's voice was clipped, officious, and John could hear voices and movement in the background. Regular life in the hospital.

"Was he... what happened?" John was sitting up now, casting his eyes about for his trousers and shoes, hoping he had enough cash for a cab, fighting down the automatic sense of urgency.

"We don't know, precisely. Some boys found him this morning. It looks like he may have fallen, hit his head. We haven't been able to wake him."

John was out in the main room now, and stopped short, halfway through shrugging into a button-down shirt. Lestrade was silent on the other end of the line, and John thought distractedly that he must be waiting for a reply, but couldn't seem to put his finger on just what he'd be asked. None of it seemed to matter, because there, draped casually on the back of the couch, was Sherlock's coat. The coat he never left the house without, pulling it on long past others had ceased to wear their own coats in summer and bringing it out of the closet at the earliest possible excuse in the fall. 

"Er," he said, after too long a pause, "just where, exactly...?"

"By the Thames," came Lestrade's exasperated reply. John had the sinking feeling that he'd already been told this. "Early this morning. Boys delivering papers. He was wet, and he's scraped up a bit. Head, shoulder." John heard Lestrade put his hand over the receiver on the other end, then a soft noise as he came back. "Right. He's awake now, barely. I'm going to go see if I can get anything out of him. You should probably get down here." A pause, an intake of breath. "John. He's been... I mean, it's not just me, is it? That he's been acting off?"

John shook his head, even though the other man couldn't see him. "No, it's not just you. He's been having a rough go of it, I'm afraid. But I don't think.... Well, I don't know why he was out last night, but I don't think it was... _that_." John switched the phone to the other hand, shrugged his other shoulder into the shirt, ran a hand through his hair. "Go talk to him. I'll be there as soon as I can."

 

* * *

 

John arrived at the hospital and found Sherlock in the emergency wing-- _Christ, where is Mycroft?_ \--doing his best to replicate his usual swagger and bravado from a horizontal position. His right arm was in a sling, and there were transparent bandages covering new stitches at his temple. John could tell, by the stiff way Sherlock held himself under the flimsy gown, that there was more damage than was visible at the moment.

Sherlock's eyes found his, lit up momentarily, and then darkened as he remembered their conversation from the night before. "John," he said, managing to sound both imperious and desperate, "you're my doctor. Please tell the detective inspector and his cohort that I cannot possibly answer any of their _interminable_ questions right now. They ought to have a bit more consideration," and at this he swung his gaze to Lestrade's face, and John almost shivered with the coldness of his eyes, "than to pester a man with a concussion with such trivialities as how he came to be in this state. Not to mention the dislocated shoulder," he said, once again turning to face John (and it was obvious that it hurt to turn his neck, one didn't have to be either a doctor or a genius to deduce that), "and various other... varieties." 

Abruptly, Sherlock seemed to run out of steam, and the facade crumbled as his eyes closed and he seemed to close in on himself. Lestrade, embarrassed at being witness to his consultant in such a state, closed his notebook with a too-efficient snap. "Right," he said, beckoning to the officers accompanying him and beginning to walk toward the door. "If you remember anything else, have John ring me." He glanced at John with a very unprofessional twist of the mouth as he departed, but soon John was alone with Sherlock. Or, at least, as alone as they were likely to be for a while, as hospital staff bustled busily past on the other side of the curtains being used as a screening partition. 

John picked up a piece of cloth on the only chair and moved it aside, only belatedly recognizing it as the shirt Sherlock had been wearing the night before. It was obvious the emergency technicians had had to cut it off him; Sherlock wouldn't look at it, instead meeting John's eyes with an expression of mixed apprehension and challenge.

"What in the bloody hell--" John began, ramping up to berate his friend for what had obviously been an act of monumental stupidity. 

"John." Sherlock's voice was low, but carried with it an intensity that made John's words freeze in his throat. "I didn't mean for this to happen. I wasn't out for _drugs_ ," at this Sherlock's gaze flicked to the direction in which Lestrade had departed, and John suddenly realized that the detective inspector must have assumed Sherlock had been attacked while out trying to score, "and I didn't bloody jump." He looked at John, his eyes almost pleading, and John nodded just the merest fraction, chin first, an ex-army gesture. Something inside Sherlock seemed to release, infinitesimally.

"I know you didn't," John said, wanting to grab his friend in a bear hug, stroke his hair like a child. He settled for reaching out to set his hand gently on Sherlock's knee. The cool eyes flicked down in surprise, then back up to John's face. "I know you... wouldn't. Either. But what in the _bloody hell_ \--" and here John had to check himself, take a breath, because he was angry, could feel the frustration boiling just below the surface, "were you doing running about in the middle of the night without even taking your sodding coat?" There had been a thin film of ice on the Thames that morning, just along the banks. Enough to damage.

Sherlock reached up with his good arm--the one scarred by the bomb blast--and fiddled idly with the tube leading to the IV in his elbow. "My head feels clearer, even with the bash, than it has in ages," he said, as though to himself. "I haven't been thinking clearly for a while. After you... well," Sherlock broke off, and John felt a twinge of guilt that he tamped down resolutely, "after we talked last night, I just needed to go out. I walked a while,” and here he waved his hand, haphazardly, "and then I started to feel it a bit--the cold, and I was tired--so I climbed a fire escape, to get up into the wind. To stay awake," he added hastily, and John nodded again, as though that were a rational thing that a rational person would do in that situation. "I was standing up there, watching the lights, and then I just went over."

"Into the river?" John asked, trying to keep his question straightforward, free of hazards. _Exhaustion, dehydration... any number of reasons he might have fainted._ "That's miles from Baker Street."

"I didn't get all that way," Sherlock said, ruefully. "Not that far at all, actually."

"But then how..." John began, then stopped himself.

"Quite. I caught another fire escape and a... bit of a tree... on my way down," Sherlock said, with a glance at his hip, and John tried not to imagine the mess the gown was covering, "and must have eventually hit the pavement, although I confess to being somewhat less than sensible at that point. It couldn't have been much later when I woke up. I'd smashed my mobile, and I wanted to go home"--here, another furtive look at John, who kept his face impassive, afraid to betray too much--"so I walked. In, it turns out, the entirely wrong direction." 

John tried not to think about the state his friend must have been in when he made that decision, and what it would have cost him in effort. It was easy to put the grim reality out of his mind, he found, when he looked up. The expression on Sherlock's face was, for the first time in a long while, a genuine smile. It didn't last long, but John couldn't help but feel an answering grin stretch his own mouth. "Entirely wrong," John said, amused in spite of himself, "and you the genius who knows the streets of London like the back of his hand. And then, I suppose, you just fell in the water?"

"Presumably," Sherlock said.

"And then climbed back out again?"

"One could assume."

"Bloody stupid," John said.

"Actually, that last bit--"

The return of the attending physician cut Sherlock off. It was getting on toward late morning by this point; John rubbed his hand over his face, listening to the negotiations between doctor and patient. It was "medically advisable" for Sherlock to stay in the hospital under supervision for the next several days; it was "logical and significantly less _boring_ " for him to go home under the promise of supervision by John.

"One night," he said finally, cutting into the conversation before Sherlock could once again insult the physician's intelligence. Christ, but he's cheery for someone who just took a header off a... _I don't even know how high the building was. Nor do I care to._

"Stay here one night, Sherlock. You can come home with me tomorrow." The look on Sherlock's face was devastated, devastating. John tried to make it feel like less of a rejection. "You'll need the IV for a bit, and those things don't transport easily in cabs. And it'll give me time to tidy up, bring you a fresh shirt to wear out of here... replace your mobile." Sherlock's face brightened at the last, then darkened again, and John thought he must have realized that he was being confined to a hospital overnight without the possibility of texting to keep himself occupied. 

"He's going to need a book," John said to the physician, trying to keep a straight face when Sherlock made a noise of protest.

 

* * *

 

In truth, it wasn’t just that he wanted time to get the flat ready for Sherlock’s return. John knew that he needed to mentally prepare himself to take unconventional steps, for Sherlock’s benefit as well as his own. The events of the night before had constituted a sort of crisis, he decided; if what Sherlock had confessed to him was true (and John had no reason to doubt that it was), the other man had, as Harry would have put it, hit bottom. _At,_ he thought with grim amusement, _rather a high velocity._

 _Well, then._ John sat on the edge of the sofa, fingers idly plucking at the weave on their Union Jack pillow, looking around the flat in mild bemusement. Things were going to have to change, that much was clear. John thought he understood— _Oh God, I hope I’m not getting this wrong_ —what Sherlock had been asking for the previous night. Sherlock, with his great brain and ego to match, asking to be humbled. _Right. Yes. Okay._ John idly rubbed his leg.

 _The most absurd thing I’ve ever done_ , he thought, and heard the amused reply in his own head, in Sherlock’s voice: _You invaded Afghanistan._ “That wasn’t just me,” he repeated softly, and his mind shied away from the truth he barely dared to admit to himself: he would have done the same, just him, if he’d had a reason. If he’d thought it would help.He couldn’t decide if the current situation was better or worse.

In any event, he’d have a brief reprieve, a chance to watch and feel out the situation as it evolved. Maybe Sherlock’s midnight swim had been the wakeup call he needed, and he’d be back to his old self from here on out. Maybe. John didn’t dare allow that thought to do more than pass through his mind; if it took root, there’s no way he’d be able to carry out what he needed to do. What _Sherlock_ needed him to do.

Being a doctor, he knew how to hurt people, knew how far he could take it before doing real damage. Knew how much the body could stand— and here he stopped himself. _I know how much_ most _bodies can stand; Sherlock’s body is a different thing entirely_. Until that night, John had seen him all but detach his mind, brushing the physicality of his existence aside like errant cigarette smoke. A thrill of fear curled at the base of his spine at the thought that he was about to find out, was going to _have to_ find out, just what “the edge” meant to someone like his erratic flatmate.

And, of course, being a soldier, he had courage. Sherlock had said there were no such thing as heroes, but here he was, a big damn hero in his own right, with scars and a pension to prove it. John set his jaw, feeling his teeth click together. He’d watch, and if the situation required, he’d do what had to be done.

When John arrived at Bart’s the following morning, it was to find a beleaguered-looking Lestrade standing in the corridor outside Sherlock’s room. The detective inspector was holding a case file and looking dejectedly down at his mobile.

“Want me to take your number out of this, before I give it to him?” John cracked, gesturing with the new phone he’d brought with him.

“Useless,” Lestrade said, resigned but smiling. “The bastard knows my number by heart. Mine and half the squad’s.” He lifted the file. “We took these yesterday, before he woke up. Thought we might need them as evidence in an assault charge. Since he doesn’t seem to want to file one, they’re useless now; he’s demanding we destroy them, but I thought you might want to see. Do what you want with them, when you’re done.”

John took the file and flipped it open, revealing eight-by-ten glossy photographs of Sherlock’s body. _Crime-scene photos,_ he thought numbly, _and he did it all to himself._ Lacerations and bruises covered the narrow frame, and the faint gleam of bone was visible through the torn skin over one rib. _Jesus._ Fingers, toes, and lips were blue-tinged from the cold, the throat hollow and deeply shadowed. John’s hand jerked, steadied, and he closed the file.

“Thanks,” he said, gruffly. “How’s he… ah.” John didn't even know how to phrase the question; mercifully, Lestrade seemed to grasp his meaning without needing it spelled out.

“Quiet, now,” Lestrade said, smiling. “Mostly because I’m out here. I guess the nurses had a hell of a night after one of them caught him sleeping. He’ll tell you.” Lestrade inclined his head, indicating the open doorway.

 _After one of them caught him sleeping._ Sherlock’s encounter with gravity hadn’t worked a minor miracle, then. John sighed, thanked the detective inspector, and entered the room.

Sherlock was sitting up in the bed, face grey and shadowed, looking impossibly thin under the worn sheets of the hospital cot. “Finally,” he said, but it wasn’t with his usual imperious air. From another man, it might have been an expression of gratitude. “This place is so _boring.”_ John noted the jumble of opened cotton swabs and tongue depressors on the nightstand next to his free hand, and wondered idly just how Sherlock had passed the hours since he’d last seen him. A cheap paperback novel lay in the far corner, pages bent askew; Sherlock had obviously flung it away in disgust.

“Got you a new phone,” John said, by way of greeting. By way of avoiding saying anything else. “I put the numbers in, at least the ones I knew. Mine’s there. And Lestrade’s. Your brother’s.” Sherlock looked sharply over John’s shoulder, as though expecting Mycroft to materialize at the mention of his name. “No, not a word from him. I haven’t called. I thought you could, if you… wanted to.”

Sherlock didn’t reach for the device as John had expected. “He’s surely been keeping an eye on me. If he wanted to contact me, it would have already been done.”

John ignored the note of sadness in his voice and forged ahead. “Brought you one of my jumpers, too.” Sherlock gave him a look that could only be interpreted as frank alarm. “Easier to fit over the sling. Your button-downs would be impossible.” It was a start.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock had complained loudly but eventually allowed John to slip the jumper over his head, threading his good arm through the left sleeve and allowing the sling to hang undisturbed at his side. The attending physician—a different one than the day before—had admonished both John and Sherlock about the ill-advised nature of their undertaking, and Sherlock, in turn, had enlightened the doctor as to the ill-advised nature of both his hair care routine and his habit of casually sleeping with the younger male members of the hospital staff. John, torn between amusement and embarrassment, pretended not to hear and thanked his colleagues for taking such good care of Sherlock, promising to be in touch if he should require any further assistance.

The ride back to Baker Street was John’s own personal version of hell. Sherlock was exhausted and jumpy, obviously in pain, and obviously uncomfortable in John’s presence. He held himself stiffly and John found himself reaching out to steady his friend every time the cab made a turn, for fear that he’d tip over onto his dislocated shoulder or otherwise hurt himself. Sherlock babbled about this and that, complained about how _boring_ the hospital had been, how idiotic the doctors (“Those idiots are my colleagues, Sherlock,” John had said, to which Sherlock replied, “Lestrade is mine, and he’s even worse”). He wouldn’t meet John’s eye.

Finally, as they started to near the end of the ride, John turned to Sherlock, reaching out to touch the side of his neck, trying to make his hand both stern and reassuring. “Sherlock.” He applied a small amount of pressure, and Sherlock did turn to face him then, eyes guarded. “It can’t go on. Like this.”

“Of course not. Obvious. That’s what I was—“ Sherlock stopped, eyes widening in understanding as John tightened his grip, digging his thumb very slightly into the underside of Sherlock’s jaw.

“Listen to me. This. You. The way you… the way you’ve been. It can’t go on.” John forced himself to hold Sherlock’s gaze, as much as he wanted to break it, look down, away, anywhere else but into those eyes. “I think I understand what you were asking me, two nights ago. And I think I can do it. But this is for real. If we’re going to do this, it has to be real.”

“An experiment done half-way isn’t of use to anyone, John,” Sherlock said, voice low and even, slightly amused.

“It’s not an experiment,” John answered, fighting to keep his nerves out of his voice, sure the other man would notice his pulse racing. “I’ve told you and I’ve told you, I’m fine with… everything that happened. That night. But you know that’s what happened since has been….” John broke off, looked up; they were turning onto Baker Street. He was out of time. “You know as well as I do that it can’t continue. And I don’t… I don’t want to. Do what you asked, I mean. But I will, if I must. Unless…?” John looked at Sherlock, beseeching, hopeful.

The other man shook his head. Sherlock was looking down now, and the cab had slowed to a stop in front of their door. He took a deep breath, and John could see that it hurt him. “I’d be lost without— I will be lost. I need this.” He looked up, mouth twisted, challenging. “Nerves of iron and a steady hand.”

The door opened. John nodded once, felt the familiar soldier resolve settle over him, stepped out onto the kerb, and helped his friend to stand, guiding him unsteadily inside.

 

 

  


* * *

 

Getting up the stairs was an ordeal, but eventually they managed it, Sherlock even paler than usual and panting by the time John jiggled open the door and half-walked, half-dragged his friend inside. He deposited Sherlock on the sofa, set some water to boil, and then took the folder Lestrade had given him and disappeared. Sherlock, sweating quietly, didn’t even seem to notice.

John had spent part of the previous day attempting to restore some sort of order to the delicate chaos that usually reigned in 221B Baker Street. Most of his attention had been concentrated on Sherlock’s room, where many of the more disturbing experiments were usually located. To his dismay, John had found a box of food—half-eaten slices of toast, protein bars, fruit; _So even less than I thought, then_ —tucked under the bed, but otherwise not much evidence of experimentation.

Two of the walls usually contained tacked-up newspaper articles, photographs, and other mementoes pertaining to cases past, present, and future. John made a beeline to the furthest wall, removing enough of the detritus to expose four square feet of space, in which he tacked up the photographs from the file Lestrade had given him that morning. Glossy and eye-catching, they hung there accusingly. John had to shake his head to clear it of the thought that this, this battered, blue-tinged near-corpse, was not a vision of the future but rather a relic of the past. _Nowhere to go from the bottom but up,_ John thought, and the optimism sounded fake even in his own head.

The kettle began to whistle, and John went back out to the kitchen to prepare the tea. While it was steeping, he checked on Sherlock; his eyes were still closed, but his cheeks were beginning to flush a bit. Cheekbones and jawline stood in sharp contrast to the pale flesh surrounding them. Grabbing a jar of jam, John prepared two slices of toast for his flatmate, and, as an afterthought, grabbed an apple from the bowl he’d placed In the oven to protect it from the experiment with the fruit flies. _Glucose,_ he thought morosely; even knowing that was what had been dripping into Sherlock’s arm for the past twenty-four hours, he had serious doubts that his body had made much headway in replenishing its supply of ready-to-burn fuel. Sherlock hadn’t said a word, of course, but John thought he’d seen his leg tremble briefly in the cab.

Carrying a tray laden with tea, toast, and the apple, John limped his way out into the living room. Sherlock’s nostrils flared, and he opened his eyes. They flashed briefly as he fought to push himself upright, off the back of the sofa into a more dignified position. John reached out, gently helping to ease him up, careful of the dislocated shoulder and the torn skin of his torso.

“All of it,” John said, indicating the tray. “Every bit.”

Sherlock took a piece of toast, bit into it, chewed carefully. John heard his stomach gurgle as the first of the tea hit it, and he thought Sherlock likely hadn’t had anything to drink except Thames water since who-knew-when. He certainly wouldn’t have asked, in the ward.

“This would be easier,” came Sherlock’s amused voice, “if you wouldn’t stare at me.” He was working on his second triangle of toast now, John noted with approval, and no indication that he intended to stop.

“I am assessing,” John said, matching Sherlock’s cadence and trying for his most doctorly tone, “my enormous git of a flatmate. I have the notes from A&E, but I’ll need to do an examination myself.” John had seen a fair portion of Sherlock’s injuries already, of course, between the photographs and the struggle with the jumper in the hospital, but at the time he had been afraid to push, afraid of upsetting whatever delicate balance Sherlock might have reached in his own mind.

Sherlock picked up the apple, eyed it accusingly, took a tentative bite. “Blech,” he said. “Past ripe. It’s gone off.”

“Finish it,” John said, unyielding. “It won’t hurt you.”

Sherlock’s hand dropped away from his mouth, momentarily, and he eyed John appraisingly. John saw the corner of his mouth twitch, then it was obscured by the apple as he finished eating. John nodded approvingly. “Thank you,” he said, when Sherlock had finished and placed the core on the tray. John walked it out to the kitchen, put it in the sink to be dealt with later, squared his shoulders, and then returned to the living room to face his friend and patient, for the first time without distractions between them.

They stared at each other for a long minute, then John noticed Sherlock shifting his injured shoulder uncomfortably under the jumper. “Hurts, does it?” he asked, not without sympathy. Sherlock nodded, but didn’t say anything. “Dislocations are tricky,” John said, settling himself on the sofa and easing his hand behind his friend’s back, rubbing gently along the spine. His thumb and forefinger dug in along the back of Sherlock’s neck, attempting to ease the tenseness of the muscles there. Sherlock’s eyes closed gratefully. “They heal slowly, and the pain can be unpredictable.”

John kept rubbing his neck, trying to sound soothing as he began the part of the conversation he had been dreading. “You haven’t been taking very good care of yourself, Sherlock.” The other man’s eyes opened, suspicious, but John forced the rhythm of his hand on the back of Sherlock’s neck to remain steady, and was soon rewarded as they closed again. “You know how I feel about what happened at the pool. Not your fault. It’s what’s happened since then that I have a problem with. That you’re going to have to… earn forgiveness for.” He hated having to couch it in those terms, but it seemed the only way his friend was capable of understanding; Sherlock simply didn’t have an innate understanding of his own worth as a physical being— _the rest is just transport,_ John heard in memory, _and he wouldn’t bloody think that transport can’t do its job with two flat tires and no petrol, that wouldn’t be nearly_ genius _enough—_ so if learning to take care of himself had to occur in the context of winning John’s approval… well, so be it. John would play that game.

“Come on,” John said, slowing his fingers on the back of Sherlock’s neck and beginning to leverage his own weight off the sofa. “I have something to show you.”

 

* * *

 

John led Sherlock to his room, where his gaze immediately fell on the glossy photographs of himself on the wall. John heard a quick intake of breath; otherwise, Sherlock’s face betrayed no emotion at the sight confronting him. John gave him a moment, then walked them both closer.

“See here?” John said, trying to keep his voice calm, soothing. “Lestrade took these pictures when they brought you in yesterday. In case they were needed as evidence. In case you… didn’t wake up.” He chanced a quick glance at Sherlock, whose eyes were moving rapidly over one of the photos showing the beginnings of a dark bruise spreading across most of his lower back. “You’re lucky to be here, Sherlock. Do you see?”

John reached out, indicating the photo of the torn skin on his ribcage, the bone gleaming through. “I don’t just mean the injuries from the fall. All of it. I left it… too long. And here.” His finger jabbed at a picture showing the purplish blue of Sherlock’s not-quite-frostbitten toes, incongruously long and awkward. “Reckless. You could have lost fingers, toes, nose to frostbite. How would you do your experiments, then? How would you go tearing about London?” The last part wasn’t strictly true—it hadn’t been _that_ cold—but John let it stand.

Sherlock’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “I didn’t think—“

“No, you didn’t,” John interrupted. “You—you!—didn’t think. Not at all.” He took a deep breath and continued. “Well, I want you to think now. Think about what it’s meant for me, to watch you do this to yourself—“ he waved his hand, exasperated, indicating the whole wall, the whole mess that was Sherlock’s life, “watching you do this to yourself and claiming it was about me. It’s never been about me, Sherlock.”

At this, the taller man’s eyes snapped up and his mouth opened to protest, but John wasn’t going to give him room to speak. “Shut. UP. You lunatic. I don’t want to hear it right now. Your bloody reasoning. I don’t _care_ why you think you did it. What I care about is that you did.” Another gesture, an outburst of frustration. Inadequate. “This is your new puzzle, Sherlock. Your new crime scene. _Who’s trying to kill Sherlock Holmes?_ Because it doesn’t seem to have occurred to you, never once flashed through that brilliant brain of yours, that I might prefer you living to dead, that that might actually _mean_ something. You were so caught up in what you think you allowed to almost happen to me _then,_ that you didn’t notice what you were doing to me _now.”_

John expected Sherlock to protest this, but he was silent, eyes clouded and unreadable. John took a deep breath, checked his hand. Steady.

“Come on,” John said, finally. “Let’s sit down, I’ll have a look at your ribs and see if I can help make your shoulder a bit more comfortable.”

A few moments later, as Sherlock was sitting on the bed after a rather undignified struggle to remove John’s jumper, John heard him speak, finally. Quietly. “‘What you were doing to me now’ isn’t proper, John. Even you know that. Completely agrammatical.”

John’s mouth twitched, in spite of himself. “Oh, completely,” he said, gently easing the sling off Sherlock’s arm. “As idiots go, I’m blithering. Past the point of comprehensibility. Here,” he said, piling pillows on Sherlock’s lap to make a sort of shelf, “support your arm on that, while I look at this lot."

It was a horrendous mess, even worse than in the pictures; the bruises now darkened to a deep purple, spreading under a horrifying amount of the pale skin. The stitches, where the doctors at A&E had found it necessary to reattach large flaps of it, were done in that disturbing blue thread and plastered over with clear bandages that, while convenient for the purposes of monitoring healing and infection, made the whole mess rather unfortunately reminiscent of something out of Shelley. John struggled to maintain a professional demeanor, although he wanted nothing more at that moment than to lean his head on his friend’s chest and weep.

Sherlock, for his part, endured the examination with remarkable fortitude, drawing in the occasional sharp hiss of breath as John’s fingers probed a particularly tender spot, but was otherwise uncomplaining. John noticed, however, that the knuckles of his left hand were white as they clutched the forearm of his right, attempting to add some support to his doubtlessly protesting shoulder, and John met his eyes sympathetically.

“Sherlock,” he began, felt he was choking, started over. “I shouldn’t have let it get this far. Any of it. I didn’t know what to…. I won’t. Again.” He reached out a hand, grabbed Sherlock’s knee—one of the few relatively uninjured parts of him, even his ear was deeply gashed from the impact with the tree—and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

Sherlock’s gaze turned to meet his own, and John could read more than pain in those pale eyes. “Yes,” he said, with what was almost a smile, but it was gone almost instantly as he continued. “But I still can’t… that is, I don’t _know_ …. ” he trailed off, helplessly, tried to shrug, and grimaced as the abused muscle in his dislocated shoulder spasmed. His gaze wandered listlessly, settling on the ceiling.

“I know,” John said, reaching out his other hand to brush Sherlock’s hair away from his forehead. “Don’t worry. I will.” He wasn’t sure as to the precise nature of the promise he was making, but he meant it.

John went to get his tube of arnica and a roll of fresh bandages as Sherlock, slowly and awkwardly, attempted to settle himself horizontally on the bed. His back and shoulder ached fiercely, and there didn’t seem to be any position that relieved the pressure on his bruised pelvis and spine. Finally he gave it up as a bad job, and John returned to find him leaning at an awkward angle against a stack of pillows, panting slightly, attention drawn inward.

 _At least he can bloody well feel it now,_ John thought to himself, although what he heard himself say was significantly kinder. “You never realize just how much you use your shoulder, do you, until it’s out of commission? And ribs, now. That’s a nasty business altogether.” John showed him the arnica. “Let me treat some of the bruises, then we’ll rewrap your arm and try to relieve some of the pressure on your neck, at least.”

So Sherlock found himself being ministered to by John, who rubbed the soothing gel over his skin in small, businesslike circles, concentrating especially on those areas with bruising but a minimum of lacerated skin, where the application itself might hurt the least. John knew that the gel itself would do little for the pain—beyond pills, which Sherlock had refused, the only truly effective treatment would be the diligent application of time—so he concentrated on the act of moving his hands over the mottled skin, trying to compel healing as much through his actions as his medicine. His hands were gentle and Sherlock soon found himself, if not precisely drifting off to sleep, then at least relaxing some deeply-clenched muscles, feeling in some ways more at ease than he had in a long time.

“The other trouble with shoulders,” John was saying when Sherlock roused himself enough to listen again, “is that it’s important not to leave them in the same position for too long. It’s a usefully mobile joint—why it comes out so easily, of course—and it needs to experience a full range of motion to heal properly. Still, a few days won’t hurt it.” He was shifting Sherlock’s shoulder, gently, feeling the reactions in the muscle, trying to diagnose by touch the extent of damage done by cold and delayed treatment.

John finished pressing fresh bandages over the lacerated skin, and moved to grab the sling. Sherlock eyed the jumper with distaste. “Surely there’s no medical reason I can’t wear a _proper_ shirt, John.”

They settled on one of his pyjama tops, and eventually managed to get both of Sherlock’s arms threaded through the appropriate holes, albeit not without a fair amount of swearing. When Sherlock’s head finally popped out of the neck, hair disheveled and his face wearing an expression that could strip paint, John couldn’t contain his laughter. Sherlock’s glare held several seconds and then his face cracked, first into a smile, then a grin, and before long the two of them were giggling, struggling to hold themselves still so as not to further jar any sore bits.

“‘A _proper_ shirt,’” he managed at last, wheezing. “You are an absolute, dyed-in-the-wool, unmitigated _lunatic._ ”

“I’m a genius,” Sherlock said. “That jumper was unforgivable, and I’m sorted now, so—ouch—so who are you to say otherwise?”

 _It’s been ages,_ John thought, _absolutely bloody ages, since we’ve laughed._

 

* * *

 

The next morning, of course, it all went rather thoroughly to hell.

 

* * *

 

John’s first thought upon waking was relief at a decent night’s sleep, then surprise that he hadn’t been summoned out of it at any point. Yawning and rubbing his stiff shoulder, he slid his feet into his slippers and made his way downstairs. The door to Sherlock’s room was ajar, the bed empty, new mobile still sitting on the nightstand. He had left Sherlock safely in his own bed with strict orders not to move for any reason, to text John if he needed anything ( _and God,_ John thought, _how his eyes positively glowed at finally having permission to text me a summons for a minor task_ ) and, exhausted, fallen into a dreamless oblivion. 

John’s second thought upon waking wasn’t really a thought at all, strictly speaking. Certainly not in the linguistic sense. It was more a blind panic, a brief moment of absolute sinking dread in which John was sure, beyond doubt, that Sherlock was no longer in the flat. That somehow, impossibly, Moriarty was making his last play at finishing what he’d started, several months earlier.

In retrospect, John would realize it was the mobile sitting on the nightstand that clued him in to something being Not Right. And there was absolutely something Not Right about the situation, he just hadn’t yet identified what.

John whirled, preparing to take the steps two at a time back up to his room to grab his own mobile. Get an alert to Lestrade. Mycroft. An instinct he couldn’t name made him pause, however, attention drawn to the kitchen.

Sherlock was there at the counter, standing absolutely still, staring. John wasn’t sure he’d ever seen the other man’s eyes so preternaturally _still_. The remains of a shattered mug was at the floor by his feet and the tea kettle lay a few yards away. There was water pooled on the floor. Sherlock’s eyes were locked on his left forearm, and even from this distance John could see the thin shoulders shaking.

John was at his side in a moment, slippered feet sloshing through the puddle of cold water. He grabbed Sherlock’s outstretched hand and saw what the other man was staring at: the blistered, angry red of a burn spread across his fingers and the back of his hand, almost to the wrist.

He knew instantly what had happened. Sherlock had ignored John’s instructions and attempted to make tea, but it was awkward with one arm in a sling, and he’d poured the water over his hand, burning himself badly. The skin on that arm was still thick and puckered from the severe burns sustained in the pool explosion, and John winced sympathetically. 

 “It’s not bad,” he said, trying to be reassuring. “I told you to stay in bed, you git.” He smiled at Sherlock, but his friend didn’t seem to have heard him. He was still staring at his hand, and John was now starting to notice other things. The water at his feet had cooled, so the accident had happened some time ago. _How long had he been standing there?_ Sherlock was still shaking, and there was gooseflesh standing on his arms. His eyes were glassy, and a flush spread up from the collar of his dressing gown and extended over his cheekbones. 

John repeated his name, trying to rouse him. On the fourth repetition Sherlock swiveled his gaze to John’s face, but his eyes were unfocused and too bright. 

John manoeuvred him to a seat at the crowded kitchen table, grabbed his kit. “It’s okay, you’re okay,” he found himself repeating, until the sounds lost their meaning and became simply nonsensical murmurs. 

“John.” Sherlock’s voice was quiet, as unfocused as his eyes, which were sliding closed. His skin was dry and hot to the touch, and the shaking hadn’t abated. _Fever,_ John knew with certainty. In a way, it wasn’t surprising; Sherlock had refused even antibiotics in hospital, and John had reasoned that, were an infection to develop, there would be plenty of time to treat it before it turned into something serious. He hadn’t reckoned, apparently, on just how weakened his friend’s body had become, how quickly a minor infection could overtake him. _Had, then. Of bloody course._

John waited, but Sherlock didn’t seem to have anything to add. He blinked, trying to convince himself that this was just a minor problem, routine, not yet a crisis. 

He looked again at his friend’s face, the flush spreading under the dry skin and the slack unfocused look of eyelids and lips.

Right. Crisis then. Well, he was nothing if not good in a crisis. 

John wrapped Sherlock’s hand carefully, treating his friend’s burned skin as gently as possible, although he wasn’t entirely sure the other man was even conscious enough to feel much at this point.

Somehow he managed to guide Sherlock back to his room. The fact that his friend didn’t protest at being guided and tucked into bed like a child worried John almost as much as anything to that point, and he had a sudden flashing vision of just what Sherlock ( _the_ real _Sherlock,_ he thought, _not this ill facsimile_ ) would have said if he’d seen their joint unsteady progress across the flat.

“You don’t do things by halves, do you?” John murmured, and that _did_ get a faint smile out of his flatmate, though pale eyes didn’t open.

John left Sherlock’s room to retrieve blankets and water, and found him asleep when he came back. John could tell it wasn’t a restful sleep—and no wonder—but at least it was rest- _ish_. Once again, John spotted the mobile sitting on the nightstand. He reached over to turn it off, but paused, weighing the phone in his hand thoughtfully. 

 _He’s going to absolutely murder me,_ John thought, and called Mycroft.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock was still asleep when Mycroft arrived a few hours later. (“Sorry to be so delayed,” he’d said, no sense of urgency in his voice, “but I was in a rather important meeting outside of London.” John couldn’t pin down what about that statement felt so sinister, but it gave rise to an ever-so-slight creeping sensation across his skin.)

Mycroft had swept into 221B, appraised the situation, and summoned Anthea ( _or whatever her name is today, and where did I go so far wrong from reality that that makes sense?_ ), who entered with a bag of medical supplies. Mycroft stood for a while gazing at his ill brother, who shifted uneasily under the blankets John had piled over his sleeping form, and finally turned to John with a knowing look.

“I was there when he sobered up, you know,” Mycroft said. John couldn’t imagine the word “detox” passing those lips. “He… well. Stayed with me, at my home outside the city. My brother,” he continued evenly, “is a very _stubborn_ man. His mind doesn’t let things go easily.”

“No,” John replied, thoughtfully. “No, it really doesn’t.”

“Indeed.” Mycroft’s lips twisted briefly. “You do know all about that, don’t you? These last few months. Well. He _retreats,_ you see. Into his head. It can hurt _awfully_ , to bring him out of it.”

“I see,” John found himself saying slowly, and he had a sudden vision of some of the older scars he’d seen on his friend’s body. His mind skittered away from further contemplation, but his face must have betrayed some understanding.

“Yes,” Mycroft replied. “I can see that you do.”

At that, Mycroft turned perfunctorily on his heel with assurances to John that he would be glad to provide anything—and here he tipped his chin downward and shot John what was doubtless a meaningful expression, though John was damned if he could make either heads or tails of just what the intended message might be—John might need, and swept out of the flat again.

John spent most of the day watching Sherlock sleep, occasionally attempting to rouse him for fluids. Mycroft’s medical kit included topical and intravenous analgesics and antibiotics and John did his best to administer those, though Sherlock had retreated so far into fever by this time that it was a struggle to get him to hold still long enough to do so.

As evening approached, John seriously contemplated calling an ambulance to take Sherlock to a hospital. His condition wasn’t improving—his temperature was still impossibly high, his skin dry as stone, stretched tight—but John was reluctant. Sherlock wouldn’t thank him for it, he knew, if he woke up in the hospital again, and John was wary of doing anything to alienate the other man. His mental state was precarious at best, and John couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a test. He’d always been good at tests.

Sherlock continued to shift in and out of degrees of unconsciousness. When John did force him to sit up and drink some water, he complied in an unfocused, haphazard way, not seeming to recognize either John or his surroundings. Not seeming to care, which worried John almost as much as the not-recognizing.

Finally, a little before midnight, John faced the fact that he just didn’t have it in him to spend a sleepless night watching over Sherlock’s restless form, and dragged an extra chair in from the living room to make a supremely uncomfortable bed.

 

* * *

 

It was black dark in the room when John’s eyelids snapped open. When he finally managed to fumble open the shade enough to let in some light from the street, he saw that Sherlock was sitting bolt upright in the bed, pawing at the wrappings on his shoulder with his injured hand. The noise he was making was unreal—a sort of growling whine—and it made the hair stand up on John’s neck.

“Sherlock.” John tried to make his way over to the bed, but became tangled in the blanket with which he had wrapped himself. _“Sherlock.”_

Finally he was there and reached out to put his hand on his friend’s chest to calm him, ease him back down in the bed. His skin was still dry and unbearably hot to the touch and John felt an uncomfortable fluttering of anxiety somewhere below his ribcage. Unwelcome thoughts like _brain damage_ flitted through his mind, and he cursed himself for a fool for not having summoned an ambulance earlier. 

He was about to leave to go make the necessary call when he heard Sherlock say his name. “ _John._ ” His friend’s voice was almost unrecognizable, high-pitched and rasping, and John immediately turned back to the bedside.

“Yes, right here,“ he began, eyes searching Sherlock’s face, and he wasn’t expecting the blow when it came.

 

  


* * *

  


 

He couldn’t have been down for more than a moment or two, John knew. He barely had time to register the fact that Sherlock had hit him—a wide, clubbing swing with his left arm that still had John a bit dazed—before the other man was on top of him, mumbling incoherently and pawing at him with his bandaged arm. 

“What in the _hell_ do you think you’re doing?” John demanded, grabbing his burned arm below the elbow.  Sherlock tried to head-butt him instead, and John instinctually grasped his bad shoulder, holding him back as he tried to get his feet under him. Sherlock’s eyes were bright and hard, his lips twisted into unrecognisability. _He’s going to kill me,_ John thought with sudden certainty. 

Then: _He’s going to try._

“ _Sherlock!”_ he shouted, not really expecting it to do any good. The other man’s eyes didn’t change, there was no hint of recognition, and John swore to himself. “Right. Perfect.”

Somehow he found his footing, dragging himself and his struggling friend to his feet. He yanked on Sherlock’s left arm, pulling him up, and the other man _screamed_ , a high-pitched sound that made the hairs on John’s neck prickle. Even delirious and ill Sherlock possessed a wiry strength, and John swiftly realized that he wasn’t going to be able to subdue him without considerable force.

 _Hang the doctoring, then,_ he thought. _I’ll just patch you up again tomorrow, anyway._

John looked around the room, assessing, feeling that familiar battlefield calm spill over him. Sherlock was shaking violently in his grasp, and not just with his efforts to get loose. _Mustn’t forget the fever,_ John thought, weighing his options. He could leave Sherlock here, try to get out the door, ring the ambulance and wait it out, but there were too many unknowns in this room, no way to keep him warm or ensure he wouldn’t hurt himself in the meantime. He could try to restrain him, but the doctor in John knew there were no guarantees as to how long Sherlock’s fever-delirium would last, and John was afraid he’d hurt himself further. Besides which, he’d have to either release Sherlock (whom he was pretty sure he’d just heard growl _kill you_ by John’s ear) to try to fasten restraints out of something or resort to sitting on his chest. The latter would be hell for his ribs, do nothing to reduce his fever, and would prevent John from summoning an ambulance, and both seemed to pose significant threat of resulting in Sherlock injuring John.

John’s eye lit on the door of the bathroom, just a few yards away across the hall. _Small enough,_ he thought, cataloguing the contents in his mind’s eye. Nothing that could serve as a potential weapon would be to hand in there—the razors were in the oversink cabinet, and he doubted Sherlock would be cognisant enough to sort that out in his current state—just soap and toothbrushes and towels. _When the alternative is beakers of godknowswhat, he can chuck hairbrushes at me all day long._ Assuming, of course, he could prevent Sherlock from breaking the mirror. John refused to think about that.

John set his jaw, grasped Sherlock’s left wrist tightly, the other man gasping at the pressure of his fingers on the burned skin, and spun him, wrapping his arm around his ribcage and locking his left hand against his side. With his right hand he grasped Sherlock’s bad shoulder, fingers digging in as he pushed the other man forward, using the pain to draw Sherlock inward just enough that he couldn’t resist with his full strength. Even so it was slow going with Sherlock fighting all the way, but eventually he managed to manoeuvre them both across the hall and into the small bathroom, closing the door behind him. He turned the small Victorian key and slipped it into the pocket of his pyjamas. 

John’s hip and shoulder were aching but he kept hold of Sherlock with one hand, reaching out awkwardly with the other to turn on the shower. He dialed the “H” tap to what he knew to be the furthest not-quite-scalding position, and soon thick steam was filling the bathroom. He wanted to get Sherlock into the shower, under the hot water. It was probably too much to hope that the fever would actually _break,_ but at least he stood a chance of staying warm.

Sherlock was still fighting him, shuddering violently but showing no signs of weakening as John would have expected. Precisely where in the thin frame these reserves of energy were stored was a mystery, and not one he particularly cared to solve. His medical training told him that this was a good sign—if he still had energy to fight, his body was also fighting the infection—but he didn’t need his military training to know that this would all be easier if the other man would just act like a proper sick person and leave off trying to murder him.

“Sherlock, _stop this,”_ he said, exasperated, at a loss, not really expecting the other man to hear him. 

Sherlock stilled under his hand.

“Stop his heart.” The reply was cold, even, the voice clear despite the jagged undertones. A deep breath that must have hurt his ribs, then: “I’ll. Stop. Yours.”

Sherlock turned, twisting in John’s grasp, and lunged. They went backward together over the lip of the tub, tangled in the shower curtain. John felt the water pelting his face and then Sherlock’s body was pressing against his own, pinning him down. John’s arms were tangled in the cheap plastic of the shower curtain and his legs were already going numb, pinched against the sharp edge of the tub by the weight of Sherlock’s body, his neck at an awkward angle.

John opened his mouth to protest and it was immediately filled with water. He spit it out as Sherlock’s burned hand found his hair, twisted in, nails raking his scalp. Sherlock growled, punctuating each word with a slam of John’s skull against the hard side of the tub. “My. Answer. Has. Already,” John heard, and had time to wonder whether it would be drowning or a cracked skull that did him in before everything went dark and silent.

 

* * *

 

Hearing came back first, as it always did. Sherlock’s voice, answering an unheard question: “You’re making me repeat myself. I do not _care_ that he is going to be _fine,_ I’m not going to—“

Sensation came slamming back and John groaned. It seemed that there was hardly a muscle in his body that didn’t ache but that paled in comparison to his head, which felt like it had been split with a cleaver. Sherlock stopped speaking abruptly, and John felt a hand on his forehead. He forced his eyes open, squinting against the light.

“Oh good.” Sherlock’s voice again, and there was his face coming slowly into focus, shadowed and tight-lipped, but with clear eyes. John caught a glimpse of the wallpaper over his shoulder and realized he was on the sofa in 221B. _Not in hospital, then,_ he thought, struggling to remember why he thought he needed a hospital. “Stupid of you to pocket the key, you know.”

“ _Sherlock._ ” Lestrade came into view from the kitchen.

“Well, it was!” Sherlock shot back, turning his head over his shoulder to glare at the detective inspector. John winced at the noise. Turning back to face him, Sherlock’s expression softened. “Are you all right, John?”

“Mmm,” John managed, his tongue feeling thick in his mouth. The pain in his head made him seriously doubt his ability to form a coherent word, let alone a sentence, and he didn’t much care to try. 

“I pulled you out of the water,” Sherlock said, pale eyes directed full-force into John’s. “I didn’t remember that part.”

John sighed and pushed himself upright, aching muscles somehow pulling together until he could turn and swing his feet to the floor. His head didn’t like that and he grabbed at it as a wave of nausea rolled through him. He unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Ungh. Um. What are you. Ah.” Sherlock was sitting beside him, hand steady on his back. John squinted at him sideways. “What are you talking about?”

Sherlock’s lips curled into what might have been a smile. “In the pool. You hit your head.”

“The tub,” John said, closing his eyes, then snapping them open again as his wandering mind finally managed to grasp the issue that had been niggling at it. He examined Sherlock’s face and was relieved to find that he was, in fact, perfectly lucid, no longer fevered. His hair was damp and stuck out at odd angles, and a dark bruise spread along one side of his jaw. He wasn’t well, by any means—his drawn face was still tinged grey beneath the skin, and there was a tremor running through the hand against John’s shoulder blade—but it appeared the fever, at least, was no longer a danger. 

Lestrade was sitting in the armchair opposite, grasping the Union Jack pillow. He learned forward, eyes on Sherlock’s face, his own carefully expressionless. “Sherlock,” he said, slowly, “where do you think you are right now?”

Sherlock turned to him, rolling his eyes. “If you are attempting to imply that I am mistaken,” he said, exasperated, “I must assure you that you are wrong. I’m perfectly well aware that John just hit his head in the _tub_. What I’m saying is that he also hit his head at the pool. Do try to keep up.” He turned back to John, dismissing the other man.

Lestrade chuckled. “All right, then. I’m still not entirely convinced John doesn’t need a hospital, just confirming that we didn’t need to book a room for you as well.”

John rubbed his fingers against his temple. His head really did hurt awfully. “You may need to walk me through this one, Sherlock.”

Sherlock twisted to peer behind him, at the back of John’s head, and John noted that his flatmate’s movements belied a not-inconsiderable amount of pain. Lestrade seemed oblivious to that state of affairs, though, so John didn’t remark on it. “It’s still bleeding a bit,” Sherlock said, with a tinge of worry underlying the calm of his words. “Do you want Lestrade to take you to A&E to have it stitched?”

John thought about Sherlock’s own state of health, his earlier resolve to summon an ambulance. He could feel the unease between Sherlock and Lestrade, however, and wondered just what his friend had told the detective inspector. “We should probably both be in hospital,” he admitted, finally, “but I think it can wait a bit. What, er…?” John closed his eyes, willed the room to stop spinning. It did, eventually, so he opened them again.

Sherlock was looking at him intently. “John, are you all right?” The deep tone of Sherlock’s voice gave away his concern. Lestrade looked up sharply, hearing it, then just as quickly averted his gaze.

“My head hurts a bit,” John admitted, and Sherlock’s lips twitched into what might have been either a smile or a grimace, “but I think I’ll live.”

Lestrade stood. “I’m going to check in with the squad,” he said, heading toward the door. “I’ll be right outside for a bit. Summon me if you need anything.” He gave John a wink as he opened the door, and then John and Sherlock were alone in the flat.

“John,” Sherlock said, as soon as the door had clicked shut behind the detective inspector. “I”m so sorry.”

John blinked. “I suspect we may both live,” he said, carefully, “so you’re forgiven. If, that is, you tell me what just happened.”

Sherlock described—briefly, carefully, without emotion—how he had finally come back to himself on the floor of the bathroom, John unconscious in the tub, the shower water beating down on his face and into his slack mouth and mixing with the blood from his head.

“It was rather a lot of blood,” Sherlock said in a tone John would _almost_ class as sheepish, “and of course I wasn’t trying to… that is, I thought you were… _him._ ”

“Yes.” John knew he was answering a question Sherlock didn’t know how to ask. “I figured that out myself.”

“Mm. Well. And I remembered. In the pool. After the explosion. You hit your head then, too, and I pulled you out.”

“Yes,” John said again. His head throbbed.

“I didn’t remember that part,” Sherlock said quietly, and John finally— _finally_ —felt understanding slam through his battered brain. Sherlock hadn’t remembered that he saved John’s life that night, that he fought through his own injuries to find John as he floated underwater, dazed, bleeding, and unable to muster his limbs into enough coordination to fight him to the surface. 

“I would’ve drowned,” John said in a measured voice. “You pulled me out of the pool.” _You idiot_ , he added silently.

“I did,” Sherlock said, with a hint of a smile. “I deleted it—tried to, anyway—because. Well. You looked…” he sighed, turned away, continued, “ah. It was a lot of blood. But it might have helped. To know, I mean.” His eyes flicked back to John’s, held his gaze.

 _That you saved me,_ John’s brain supplied, and he put his hand on his friend’s knee. 

“You’re a right bastard,” Sherlock admonished. “Hiding the key. _Really._ ”

“You were trying to murder me,” John rejoined mildly, like it was a joke _._ “I didn’t think you’d manage it. And heads always bleed a lot. Seem worse than they are.”

One way or another Sherlock had managed to get the tap shut off, dragged John out of the tub and onto the floor, pressed towels against the back of his head where the blood was pooling out. He’d been sweating and shaking horribly, the fever just coming down. Exhaustion was settling over his muscles, making him clumsy.Both hands all but useless, the bandages on his left hand disintegrating from the water and a steady agony emanating from his right shoulder.

 John had to deduce all that, of course, and  smiled inwardly at the use of the word. Sherlock would never admit to him what those minutes in the bathroom had cost him, just as John would never admit to Sherlock the exact cost of the last few months. 

What Sherlock actually said was: “Indeed. It seemed a bit dire, at one point. But I did find the key. Eventually.” And they understood each other. Whatever the cost, they’d both paid it.

“And you called Lestrade.” 

Sherlock chuckled, brushing aside the serious state of affairs leading up to that decision. “Yes, well, I couldn’t lift you. The other alternative was _Mycroft_ , and that was far from appealing. In addition to which, Lestrade makes much better coffee.”

Sherlock managed to get himself into dry clothes before Lestrade arrived, and the two of them had done the same for John’s unconscious form, settling him on the couch. 

“He wanted to call the ambulance,” Sherlock said, peering worriedly in John’s face. “I thought you’d probably want to stay here, though. But if you think….”

John put a hand gingerly to the back of his skull. It was sore and his hair was stiff with dried blood, but the bleeding had stopped and he doubted stitches would do a bit of good. A scan could wait.“No,” he said, finally. “It’s fine. It’ll be fine.”

“Yes. It will,” Sherlock answered with a smile, settling back slightly. “When you’re ready you can make us some tea.”

They sat on the sofa in companionable silence, each with his own aches, and eventually they helped each other stand up and John made tea, and it all got much better after that.


End file.
